


Coco Gashadokuro AU Oneshots

by TipsyEpsy



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Gashadokuro AU, It's both weird and cute, The AU where Hector is a giant skeleton that shows up by little Coco's balcony every night
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-04-28 00:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14437341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TipsyEpsy/pseuds/TipsyEpsy
Summary: A series of oneshots focusing on a world where Hector Rivera comes back as a wandering spirit.The catch? He's a giant skeleton.





	1. La Leyenda del Gigantesco Esqueleto Errante

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The girl needed to go home, Hector was all too glad to give her a very big hand.”

Call it a gut instinct, whatever that may mean, but Hector just knew that, from the very moment that he got on the road that day, something exciting was going to happen to him.  
He wasn’t exactly sure how he knew this, but he just did. It was probably something he’d need to get used to, like how he knew certain things, things that made no sense for his existence.  
For one, why did he know what a gut was, when he himself did not have one?  
Skeletons did not have guts or muscles, nor flesh of any kind, yet he understood that those were things that living creatures had.  
Like the small little critter that he’d seen that morning, the little creature that was called a dog and that served as a pet to a very startled couple that he’d come across.  
And he knew they were a couple because they’d been holding hands and kissing as they walked their dog on a so called leash. Those were two things he did not fathom how he understood or had any knowledge of, considering he’d been animated for less than a year.  
No, Hector did not have a clue how he, who had barely even been, knew of things that certainly weren’t affairs of whatever he was.  
He just shrugged and went with it, because surely having this knowledge couldn’t hurt him. Perhaps having it could even help combat the loneliness of his existence!  
For, you see, Hector was not just a skeleton, but a very big one at that.  
So very big in fact, that he towered over people like a cat towered over ants.  
And that of course led to him not having that many friends…Or any at all for the matter.  
It was frustrating really, he wasn’t a bad person! Just funny looking and larger, which weren’t bad qualities in the slightest! At least not that he knew of.  
He’d even gone and “dressed” himself to look more friendly, because perhaps being seen in the “nude” didn’t quite help his case.  
Sadly, his ingenious plan didn’t seem to work.  
Clothed or not, no one wanted to be his friend.

Well, who cared! Not one to dwell on sad thoughts, Hector decided to pay attention to his feeling instead.  
Yes, something extraordinary was going to happen, he just knew (like he knew all those other odd things). Maybe he’d find something nice and shiny? Or maybe he’d see some more animals roaming around? Or, or, maybe it was new plants. He liked plants.  
Or maybe he’d get to hear music today! He loved music! More than plants!  
Now, you’d wonder why a giant skeleton that lived a nomadic lifestyle, and that had only been around for a year at that, would be able to appreciate music…And to tell the truth Hector didn’t know the answer to that either.  
Come to think of it, he’d already known what it was before he even listened to some…It felt like a part of him, just like how the name “Hector” felt like a part of him as well.  
So much that he knew, and so little he did, really…But who cared? Who cared?  
Maybe he’d get to hear some! All he had to do was what he usually did: Follow the rails.  
Comfortable as he was with his own existence, odd as it may be, Hector wasn’t completely oblivious. He knew that, whatever he really was there had to be magic involved.  
That had to be the case, because he just so happened to know that giant skeletons were not a thing of the living normal world. They were supernatural things most likely, like spirits or the occasional brujo he came across in his travels.  
He was grateful really, that despite knowing this he also knew that he was nice.  
The same he could not say for the stranger things that he saw out in the desert.  
The brujos for one, were very much not nice people. They wore the skin of animals or other people, and there was a wickedness to them that he knew spelled trouble for those they lured. They presented him as well, avoiding him as soon as they saw him coming.  
Skinwalkers were the devil’s work, so whatever Hector was, had to be good if they hated him, right?

He paused, brought out of thoughts by a sound in the distance. A coyote’s cry, perhaps? Or maybe another one of those malditos brujos mimicking the cries of their victims?  
Or perhaps it could even be a stray xolo, drying out in the sun after wandering too far from civilization. Many things followed the tracks, Hector included. It wouldn’t be weird.  
Still, something felt different. Different good, like the feeling he’d been having all morning.  
Maybe this was the exciting thing? A cry?  
Not very extraordinary, but then again he still had to see what it was. He could definitely see a shape out in the distance by the tracks and, if he were to turn to look, he’d see the sun setting behind him. Too early for skinwalkers and coyotes.  
Crossing the distance wasn’t hard, especially when he had such long legs. His mind catching up to what he was seeing, however, took a little longer.  
It was a tiny little…He knew they were called humans, but, this one was just that. A tiny. A very little tiny. Not just that, it was sitting by the rails and it was…It was crying!  
A twinge of sadness deep in his ribcage made Hector feel very bad for it.  
Tinies shouldn’t be out alone at night! They had to be in their bigger parents’ arms!  
Or at least, he assumed so? He didn’t quite know but something in the back of his mind confirmed this concept. Another odd thing to add to the ever growing list. One day it might be bigger than himself, even!  
This wouldn’t do. Not at all.  
Hector approached, until his shadow blocked the remaining light around the small little crying tiny, and he watched as it (She! She was a she! Not an it!) slowly looked up from her hands to then peer up at him, up and up and up until she fell on her back.  
There was surprise there, but not the fear he expected. The fear the humans usually reserved for him whenever they saw him near.  
And then after surprise came, wariness? Or maybe discomfort? He’d need to look closer to be sure…But then he completely forgot this idea when something wonderful happened next.  
The tiny spoke!

“H-Hello?”

How wonderful! How wonderful indeed! No one had ever spoken to hector before! It was usually just screaming and running away, and those were big adult humans too!  
So here was this small little tiny one, looking up at something so colossal like himself and having so much more bravery.  
He couldn’t let out a happy bellow, which in hindsight was probably terrifying to a crying young girl.

“A-ah! L-loud!” and she spoke again! How he liked her soft little squeak of a voice, not at all shrill like her screaming older counterparts.  
This time, however, he did not vocalize his approval.  
The little one had complained after all.  
Crouching, Hector slowly settled at a reasonable distance before very carefully laying with his ribs down on the dirt.  
He crossed his arms in front of himself, before resting his jaw against his radius and ulna  
Eye contact was important for communication, especially with small children.  
He had to smile too, so he did and the little tiny girl seemed to frown in response.  
It worried him that she may cry again because he’d scared her, before he noticed her avoid eye contact and look slightly down.  
She wasn’t running nor in any clear distress, so he assumed she was being shy, just like…  
Just like…Uh, odd. He wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking just now.  
Oh, no matter, he had a tiny to inspect.  
The young girl had yet to do anything, so he took the time to look her up and down. Sun warmed skin, hair fashioned up in two cute looking braids with little pink bows, a pretty pink dress with matching shoes and coat and…Oh dear! Now he could see why she’d been crying!  
Her knees were skinned and bleeding! And so were her arms!  
And so close to the rails…Had she…Had she fallen off a train?!  
These was no place else to go for miles!  
A soft rumbling croak escaped his mouth as he neared his skull to her, trying to see if there was any debris embedded on her wounds. If so he’d need to take her somewhere, because something told me that could lead to infection, and infection was bad!  
The tiny girl squeaked in response and backed off, before tripping up because of her hurt legs. Hector frowned sadly as he noticed her eyes welling up.  
How he wished his voice wasn’t so loud…He couldn’t talk to her to reassure she’d be ok! If he tried he might blow out her ear drums!  
It was bad enough already that he’d made sounds around her, they’d certainly distressed her ever so slightly.  
But he had to help her feel better…Somehow.  
As the little tiny girl resumed her crying, an idea flashed in his mind just as brightly as Hector’s eyes and facial markings.  
If sound couldn’t help, then maybe…  
He slowly reached for the girl, raising a singular phalange before very carefully dragging it down the girl’s back in what he hoped was a comforting manner.  
She yelped loudly, which made him frown sadly.  
So much for that plan then…

“H-hey that tickled!”

Uh? Tickled?  
Hector stared at the tiny in surprise, the girl now looking up at him with a sour face.  
Tickled…Was that…That was, that was good. Tickles were good.  
Maybe he could try again?  
So he did. And the girl yelped again and tried to push his phalange away.

“Quit it!” It was only a half-hearted protest, which meant Hector’s plan was succeeding! So he repeated the action, and again, and again, until the girl forgot about being upset and began to instead laugh and playfully push away the massive bone finger that was poking and prodding at her in an attempt to lift her spirits.  
After a few minutes filled with child laughter and soft happy noises from his part, Hector finally stopped his “assault”.  
The girl was no longer upset. He’d done good.  
But then, there was still the concerning matter of her arms and legs and the fact she’d potentially fallen off a train. Surely her parents must be worried, right?  
She seemed to have the same idea, her smile disappearing when she noticed the moon slowly rising up in the sky.

“Mamá must be so worried…” she whispered, before looking up at him pleadingly. “Do you…Do you know where Santa Cecilia is?”

Santa Cecilia? That was…That was a town…The rails led to all towns. That one was close to here wasn’t it?  
Yes…Yes it was.  
He nodded in reply.

“Podrías llevarme, señor?” She asked “My mamá….She’s all alone! And if she must know I got lost by now and…And I can’t leave her alone! She’ll think–”  
He watched as his hard work crumbled, the little girl bursting into tears once more.  
No, no no no! He very carefully picked up the sobbing child, holding her up to his face. His illuminated eye sockets cast an eerie yellow light over her body, which made her tears look golden. This poor little one…He had to take her home.  
Home he…Go home? Take her, he had to go home to…Santa Cecilia?  
Why did that sound…So familiar?  
Another sob made him shake away the thought. No time to have his mind wander, he needed to help this little one get to her mamá…Santa Cecilia was not far. It would only take a a good 40 minutes at best if he carried her there.  
And he would, He’d take her home.  
Home, home, home…Santa Cecilia…Home.  
He’d go, home?  
Funny, he felt like he had to go there for more than just the sake of the little tiny…Oh well, he’d figure that out later.  
Now he had to start moving. There was someone waiting for the girl. Best not stall any longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I had to write something after seeing these two posts:
> 
> https://melcecilia14.tumblr.com/post/173080889546/not-gonna-lie-the-first-thing-i-pictured-when-i  
> https://melcecilia14.tumblr.com/post/173176118116/do-you-have-any-headcanons-of-giant-skeleton
> 
> How can I resist some size bending AUs that promise a lot of angst and a lot of fluff?  
> I'll definitly write more on this.


	2. En sus sueños, un fantasma cantó

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Imelda’s dreams used to be filled with music, color, joy and dancing. They were bright and hopeful, celebratory in feeling and almost always fantastical in nature. Now they were bleak and filled with resentment and hard work that smelled of leather and shoe polish. But, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

Imelda’s dreams used to be filled with music, color, joy and dancing. They were bright and hopeful, celebratory in feeling and almost always fantastical in nature. There were fairy tale elements, like cheery singing birds that flew all around her, and magical trumpets that proclaimed the appearance of her prince charming, her beloved husband.  
Once upon a time, Imelda’s dreams were beautiful and unmarred by heartache. Now they were bleak and filled with resentment and hard work that smelled of leather and shoe polish.  
Music was completely shunned, like in her day-to-day life, and a bitter silence coiled around her heart and throat as she slept and dreamt up these new unkinder dreams.  
The workshop was all she could invision anymore, the workshop and her familia.  
Never those childish wants of a past long dead.  
Never of the husband who’d abandoned her and their daughter.  
But...That was a lie, wasn’t it?  
To say that she never dreamt of Hector.  


It all changed after Coco went missing on the train and then showed up at the doorstep all on her own, knees and arms skinned and bloodied from a bad fall.  
Her young daughter could hardly stand on her own, much less carry herself all the way back home or even remember the way, but Imelda had not cared to think of it at the time.  
All she could think about was how grateful she was to see her baby girl back in her arms.  
And then? And then things started to happen. Strange things. And with them, strange dreams.  
One morning Imelda went to wake up Coco only to find a flower on her balcony. That in itself wasn’t odd, there were flower pots on the balcony so a singular flower laying on the tiles shouldn’t be too concerning. What confused her was the type of flower that it was.  
It was not one of the beautiful petunias that Imelda’s mamá had sent as a gift not two weeks ago, but something wild. A desert flower that had no place outside of the outskirts of town.  
She didn’t ask Coco about it, but she wondered then if her daughter had perhaps brought it back with her on the day she’d gotten lost.  


That night, Imelda’s dreams had neither the smell of leather nor the sound of shoe-nails being hammered. Instead there was still that odd silence and the lack of colors, but where she’d usually oversee the work in the dreamland workshop, she was compelled to walk instead.  
And as she walked, something new came to her.  
The smell of wild flowers, the bright color of their petals and soft humming that came from further and further away from her initial location.  
Imelda found herself wanting nothing more than to follow the melody. And she did.  
She walked and walked until flowers were all she could see, and then, and then, out in the distance, far, far away, a figure.  
Imelda woke up with a start.  
She doesn’t remember the dream until much later in the day when she finds the flower in a cup of water. Coco’s attempt the save the poor thing when it looked to be drying at the edges.  
The memory of the soft humming and the smell of flowers makes her shudder with a creeping feeling of dread and longing.  
Imelda doesn’t think twice before throwing out the dying plant.  


The next odd thing she finds on Coco’s balcony is a very beautiful looking lady’s hat. The fabric is of a midnight black color, with matching decorative gray and black striped feathers and even a few jewels attached to the strap.  
It’s fancy, it’s foreign, it’s extremely expensive.  
She has no idea how it’s gotten up there and this time she does ask her daughter.  
_“My friend gave it to me.”_ is the reply she gets, which only makes her question the hat’s existence in her house even more.  
_“Your friend?”_ she asks, getting a hum of agreement and a nod as confirmation.  
When she asks which, she gets the wildest description she could ever imagine her daughter ever giving her. In the end, Imelda decides the hat probably got lost in the wind during the night and landed on the balcony.  
Really, Coco’s tales of a gigantic skeleton were things of a child’s wild imagination. They were impossible.  


When Imelda settled in bed that night, she was claimed by another odd dream like the one she’d had the previous night.  
This time there were no flowers, the colors were gone, but the humming continued.  
Once more she was compelled to follow and all around she saw people. Women in fine dresses, wearing beautiful hats like the one she’d found on Coco’s balcony.  
She was in a party room, skirting around couples that danced to a ballad she could not heart. The humming was all she could focus on, the humming that was coming from the open varanda.  
As she stepped out into the colorless night outside, she found herself in her best dress, but no one to be with. She reached the very edge of the varanda, hands resting on intricately designed rails, and there in the distance, closer than before, stood that figure.  
She could just barely make out the outline of his nose as he turned to face her, but something felt strangely off...She woke up before she could figure out what it was.  
During work the next morning, did she figure out what it was that had plagued her moments before she’d woken from her dream. She could make out the figure in the dark, but at the distance he’d been he’d seemed too close.  
Something did not add up in her dreams.  


The third finding was a little more bothersome than the last. This time Coco was out in her balcony trying to figure out what to do with the object...An old rusty bike that had long since lost all function.  
_“Honestly Socorro! Where do you keep getting these things?”_ She’d crossed her arms as she stared at the piece of junk.  
Her daughter could only look up at her mother before looking down at her feet with an expression of guilt.  
_“I told him you wouldn’t like it…”_ she said as she looked back up with her best puppy dog eyes _“I did!”_  
_“Told who, dear?”_ Imelda had asked.  
_“I already told you! My friend! The giant skeleton man.”_ Coco exclaimed as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. No doubt in her mind of what she was saying. _“He likes to bring me pretty things, but I think he finds a lot of stuff pretty...He’s a bit silly.”_  
Imelda doesn’t reply, at too much of a loss for words of how the bicycle got up on the balcony to even begin denying that giant skeletons simply do not exist.  
There has to be a more logical explanation. There has to be...  
In the end, she lets the twins take the old metal thing for whatever they wish to make of it. They are very happy to take it off her hands.  
As she leaves her daughter’s room Imelda notices two things; The hat from the previous day now decorating one of Coco’s dolls, and the drawings on the wall. Drawings of Coco and something very big. It almost looks like a skeleton with hair and glowing eyes, draped in something.  
She has a feeling she’ll dream of something as odd that night.  
And she’s not wrong about this either.  


Her newest dream retained the usual colorlessness. A world of grayscales like the others she’d come to in. But now the silence was no longer as evident.  
The humming, the same tune from the other dreams, was yet louder. Only this time, there was something more to it.  
Soft words, added to the vocalization of the tune, ones she could barely discern but knew were there. The song was completely foreign to her, not at all something she’d heard before, but at the same time there was something unsettling in how familiar the lyrics were.  
Like a repressed memory.  
Despite the monotone lack of color, her current location was full of life. The plaza, where she knew not to go because of the mariachi that scurried along the streets like rats. But this incarnation of the plaza had no musicians, just women and men, various couples with children.  
And, of course, there were bicycles.  
She noticed the pattern, now that she was more away of her dreams. They revolved around those strange gifts that Coco had been receiving.  
The humming took precedence over the items in question, however, and once again Imelda found herself following the melody.  
It was almost like taking a stroll across town, if not for the strange muteness to the background. All she could really hear were her own footsteps, the song that was being hummed and occasionally sung, and the ringing of bicycle bells.  
It soon became apparent that she was following the tune back to her own home.  
As she rounded a corner, she was forced to stop when she found something unexpected in front of the Rivera household.  
A figure, one familiar to her, but it was...It was wrong.  
It was him, she had known it was, but her dreams must have warped him nonsensically because she did not at all remember her husband being 80 feet tall or being able to loom over their daughter’s balcony like a statuesque sentinel.  
The sight was enough to make her heart speed up.  
Oblivious to her presence, the figure, the giant, this dream version of Hector, continued humming softly before interrupting the melody to sing those gentle words. It sounded like a lullaby of some sort, which meant it was being sung to purposefully sooth.  
And, from where she stood, she could see him place something carefully on the balcony before turning to look at her.  
Something was wrong with his eyes.  


This time, Imelda woke up from a fall. Her body half laying on the floor, half tangled in bedsheets. It hadn’t felt like a nightmare, but it appeared she’d tossed and turned and sweat through her nightgown as if she’d had one all the same.  
She quickly untangles herself and sees that Pepita is not in the room with her. It is early morning then, as her feline companion usually sleeps through the night at the foot of her bed and only leaves when the sun comes up, to do whatever it is she did during the day.  
Morning brings with it her responsibilities as a mother and business owner, but now it also brought those strange gifts.  
She has a feeling there is something bizarre waiting for her in Coco’s balcony.  
When she sees the flower cart she nearly falls on her ass in shock, before rushing downstairs to find the twins. They’ll have to help her dislodge the massive thing somehow, and she dreads to think how she’ll even explain this odd occurance to them.  
She still refuses to believe her daughter’s insistence that her “friend” is the one who put it there.  
Giant skeletons do not exist! Giant skeletons do not exist! Giant skeletons do not exist!  


She can make out the words a little better the next time she falls asleep. In truth, Imelda can’t really make sense of the lyrics, something about the dream seems to block it off from her proper understanding, but she feels like at least one or two words are on the very tip of her tongue.  
This time she’s in her room and the singing is coming from Coco’s balcony. She knows to follow it without question, even if now the humming almost seems to make her bones rattle under her skin.  
Her senses are flooded by the sweet smell of flowers and Imelda decides she doesn’t quite find the sight of her daughter’s room to be appaling.  
It’s overgrown with flowers, the very same ones that had been in the flower cart this morning. Her daughter is nowhere to be seen but she has a feeling Hector is singing to her.  
When she doesn’t immediately wake up as she reaches him, she’s both relieved and angry. Relieved because she’s made progress in this weird dreamscape of hers. Angry because she’s facing someone she’d grown to resent for a justifiable reason.  
Angrier even, that this very same person was blown up to gargantuan size, looking down upon her with brilliant yellow eyes that almost felt like they were seeing right through her.  
Like the gossiping wives of her neighbors, and those brutes that laughed when she’d started out in the shoe-making business.  
How DARE he JUDGE her.  
_“Stop it.”_ she hisses up at the face looming over the balcony, eyes watering from peering up into those blinding eyes. Not from sadness, never from sadness. _“Just stop. Get out, get out of my head! Get out of my dreams!”_  
He doesn’t stop humming, he doesn’t stop staring, he doesn’t go away.  
Imelda falls to her knees and just sobs.  
Before she wakes up she can almost feel something warm and wet hit her back.  


When she comes to in bed, Coco is standing by her side, crying and holding something in her hands.  
The twins are called out of bed and the three spend the night trying to save a small bird whose wings have been broken and bent at a very odd angle.  
The whole time her daughter is crying that it’s her fault the poor animal is in so much pain.  
Imelda has a feeling this is another gift from her “friend”. The distress this one brings makes her blood boil.  
In the end they manage to save it, but it’s clear the small songbird will never fly again.  
They get a cage for it and some bird feed and water. The poor creature is too shaken to do much else other than chirp in distress.  
With time maybe it’ll calm and relax, but she doubted a wild animal would ever truly feel at home in a small town household, locked away in a cage.  


\---

The next dream is filled with broken birdsong. There is no humming, nor any singing from the gigantic dream version of her husband.  
The contrast is alarming, and this dream feels more like a nightmare than what she feels comfortable with.  
Imelda goes around in circles, but the world is blank around her and all she can hear is the screams of the bird and her daughter crying.  
She doesn’t see Hector that night. She finds herself wished she had.  


\---

The morning that follows is one full of tears. Her daughter doesn’t touch her breakfast nor talks of any odd gifts she’s received that morning.  
The twins have gone off to fix the bicycle that she’d allowed them to keep. The bird, now named Juan, is in it’s cage in an almost catatonic state.  
_“I yelled at him the other night…”_  
Imelda looks up from the newspaper and stares at her daughter, watching as she stares blankly at her plate while pushing around a portion of her food.  
_“I told him he was bad for hurting the birdie…”_ Coco continues, her eyes glossing over with tears _“I said he was bad and that I didn’t want to see him again, and he...And he didn’t show up again.”_  
Imelda feels something tightening inside her throat, a lump of something bitter. All children eventually outgrow their imaginary friends, but this feels too real.  
It really feels like her daughter is confessing to yelling at a friend.  
_“I made him cry mamá...I don’t think he has any other friends and I told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore…”_  
Her daughter cries throughout the day and Imelda ends up praying to whatever god above that whatever it really was that was putting those things on her balcony, would return that night. If just to sooth her daughter’s nerves.  
At night her prayers come true.  


**“I didn’t mean to upset her.”**  
It’s the very first time Hector speaks to her. She comes to, sitting on one of his knees, under their daughter’s balcony.  
He looks thin and ragged, unlike the previous times she’d gotten a glimpse of him in her dreams. His eyes were sunken in, looking quite haunting because of the intense glowing that prevailed despite the miserable look he had on his face. There were holes in his mariachi suit, the one that he’d spent over a year saving up for. She could see through these holes, how his skin hugged his ribs. He looked like a living skeleton. It made her uncomfortable.  
**“I’m sorry.”**  
Imelda stares up at this dream version of the husband who’d abandoned her, and feels so much and, at the very same time, so very little.  
She’s trying to understand his words, trying to comprehend what he’s implying.  
That he’d been the one to visit their daughter every night to leave impossible things on her balcony. Impossible, impossible, it just couldn’t be done. Yet it had to be...  
_“Hi hate you.”_ she catches herself telling him with a certainty reserved for saying things that were true. Like the color of the sky. But then again, the sky changed color, didn’t it?  
**“I know”** he responds in a remorseful tone, understanding and not at all willing to fight her on this matter.  
_“I miss you.”_ she adds, contradicting herself as she fights back tears of despair.  
**“I know.”** he replies once more, leaning in to rest his face near her body. His head alone is larger than Imelda herself and, if he so wanted, he could probably crush her without much thought. Like the fragile wings of a bird.  
_“Come home.”_ she begs as she puts a hand to his cheek, looking up at those burning yellow eyes and forcing herself to keep her gaze fixated, no matter how much it burns her eyes. It feels like staring at the sun.  
**“I can’t…”** he cries, warm tears running down his face.  
_“Why?”_ she asks.  
**“Because I’ve forgotten…”**  


Imelda wakes up crying, but she cannot recall what she dreamt about. Pepita is on the foot of her bed, looking over at her with concerned eyes.  
It’s still dark out, but something is amiss.  
There’s a light, a golden yellow light, coming from outside.  
Normally she’d dismiss it as being the streetlamps, but not this time. It was too high up, too intense, and it was moving.  
And then, there was the deep rumble that was making her window rattle as if it was windy outside.  
Her instincts make her tiptoe all the way out of her room, out into the hallway and towards her daughter’s room.  
She tenses every time she steps on a creaky floorboard, thinking she’ll alert whatever she thought was out there. But the rumble doesn’t stop. It carries on, undisturbed, changing once in a while into something higher and then lower.  
Imelda follows the noise like she followed the hum in her dreams. She realizes the “notes” coincide and it makes her skin crawl with anticipation and dread.  
Coco’s room is empty. She’d expected this of course. Even as she peeked in through the small gap of the door, she already knew where to find her young daughter.  
She carefully pushes the door open, making sure not to make any noise, and gets a better view.  
The yellow light is coming from outside, shining down on the balcony, where her daughter is looking up from where she’s sitting.  
Imelda can barely see through the light, but she notices. Notices the huge skeletal finger that is gently combing Coco’s messy hair, and the gargantuan ribs that move underneath a huge rag of some sort. And as she peers into the blinding brightness, she can almost make out the jaw and teeth of something that should not be.  
Imelda’s blood runs cold and she backs away from the room, she doesn’t believe what she sees. She can’t believe. She refuses.  
It’s not real, she tells herself as she rushes to her room and hides beneath the covers. Pepita meows at her, concerned and willing to comfort her. Imelda ignores the cat.  
Instead she shakes beneath the covers and fights back tears as she closes her eyes and desperately hopes to wake up for this nightmare.  
_It’s not real._  
_**It’s not real.**_  
_**IT CAN'T BE REAL!**_  


The sun rises before she knows it, and Imelda ends up spending the day in the workshop, making shoes in an almost mechanical fashion while thinking.  
Thinking about how much happier Coco seemed that morning, how she explained that she’d made up with her “friend” during the night.  
Thinking about Juan, the caged songbird, who looked livier now that the shock of whatever happened to it was fading away.  
Thinking about the flower cart and the bicycle, the hat and the flower.  
How they’d left an impact in her dreams and how they proved something more was going on, despite how unwilling Imelda was to admitting it.  
Thinking about her missing husband who’d left her to raise a daughter on her own, left her to suffer through bizarre dreams and cruel townsfolk gossip.  
She never remembers the last of her unusual dream, nor does she get any more of them.  
The monotone ones spent in the workshop are back, the smell of leather as much a disappointment as it is a comfort to her frazzled mind.  
Eventually, those odd dreams fade from her mind and all that she can remember from them is the tune of the humming that had haunted her for days.  
The humming, and two words that followed it, words that would not leave her be for some strange unnerving reason.  


_“Remember me”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to write a continuation of my previous Gashadokuro AU fic, this time focusing more on Imelda and how the strange occurances following her daughter’s strange dissapearence at the train.  
> Hector's precense as a spirit is more apparent to Coco, but it certainly leaves an impact of sorts on his wife, even if he doesn't realize it himself.


	3. Cuentos Largos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The train tracks between Mexico City and Santa Cecilia have seen many things in more than a lifetime. They carry not just the trains but the stories of those who ride it. And these tall tales? They have a little bit of impact in peoples’s lives...No matter how big or small it may be.”

### \---{On the rails headed towards Mexico City}---

Ernesto de la Cruz doesn’t believe in the supernatural. He doesn’t believe in those silly stories about the afterlife, or how one’s family lived on after death through their living family members’ memories and passed down stories.  
He definitely doesn’t believe those folk tales about vengeful ghosts and other spirits, like La Llorona or El Jinete Sin Corazón. No, those were pure childish nonsense. The types of stories he used to tell the younger children at the orphanage.  
Stories that he used to make Hector cry with in the middle of the night, because his old friend really did believe in them and genuinely thought some crazed woman or vengeful bandito would come into their room to take him away.  
No, Ernesto did not believe in any of that...He did, however, believe in being remembered.  
Fame and fortune, legacies and historical notoriority? They were the pathway to immortality! Not in a literal sense but still...Even if he did not believe in the afterlife, Ernesto liked to believe that one day, in the distant future, he’d be remembered as someone important.  
Someone who people could look up to and dream to be just like him.  
That, he thought, was something worth believing in...Even if to accomplish such a feat he had to make a few sacrifices.  
Really though, it was nothing Hector didn’t deserve to begin with. To think his so called “best friend” had wanted to abandon him like that! Keep him from reaching his dream?  


No! He’d done what had to be done. Ernesto had seized his moment, and now? Now Hector’s near betrayal had led Ernesto to be someone worth remembering.  
He was on the path to fame, to being remembered not just as one simple musician from Santa Cecilia, but THE MUSICIAN! The one who started with nothing and became a LEGEND!  
Yes, Ernesto believed he’d accomplished something more powerful than any silly ghost story.  
Because stories could be forgotten and legends could not.  
The supernatural was forgettable and not at all something he’d ever equate to being a possibility, specially not in his life…  
So imagine Ernesto’s surprise when all he believed in became completely turned upside down.  
And all it took was some superstitious woman and a train ride across Mexico....  


Ernesto’s tour had been going great ever since he’d dealt with his ex-best friend’s little “problem” and taken what he’d most definitely deserved.  
Hector’s songs and guitar, he was undeserving of them from the very moment he chose those infuriating girls of his. And what was a musician of such high caliber like Ernesto without a stunning instrument and a set of deliciously brilliant songs?  
Granted they needed a bit of editing here and there, but he could easily fix that. Just switch a few words here and the rhythm there y bueno!  
His tasteful changes had led him all across the country and back to Mexico City, where he was sure to be treated as a true celebrity. An idol to the masses.  
Ride after ride in first class, Ernesto had loved to hear his adoring fans as they babbled on about how much they adored his musical genius, handsome looks, and just how amazing he was...So he was quite dismayed when on his trip back to Mexico City he was in first class on his own. The train was practically deserted with only one woman seated at the back of the cart, clinging to a rosary and beads and murmuring under her breath.  
It was the very first early morning ride so really, Ernesto shouldn’t have been surprised to be alone. Very few people in the town he’d left got up before 6AM to go to work, and even fewer took the train to another city to work. They were all very local, which only made their curiosity of his music all that more genuine and eager.  
He was more disappointed than anything, but then again if he was alone with at least one woman he could still try chatting her up before reaching his stop. Maybe get a bit lucky if she wasn’t as devout as she was publicly trying to seem.  
If he could get a few nuns to give in to their “ungodly urges” then he was sure it was possible to do the same with the praying woman.  
The woman hadn’t been impressed when he’d joined her, however, and simply glared before hissing at him to not interrupt her “spiritual ritual”.  
_“A ritual you say?”_ He’d asked with a faux tone of curiosity, hoping to charm her into letting go of such a superstitious nonsense and give in to human nature. No one could resist him over prayers and make-believe spells _“Whatever for?”_  
_“Burlarse de otra persona, músico.”_ she’d hissed, clearly uninterested and keeping a tight grip on her beads. _“Si no me dejas terminar, entonces ÉL vendrá …”_  
_“Él? Y quién es él? El Jinete Sin Corazón? El esposo de La Llorona? Un sacerdote corrupto?” Ernesto had asked, rolling his eyes in disbelief and slight annoyance. His plans of having a bit of fun gone out the window._  
He couldn’t quite understand women sometimes, much less ones that thought they had any place saying no to him. It was hard to believe Hector had loved someone like that and had wanted to stay with her instead of becoming famous…  
The woman didn’t stop glaring the whole time he called out his ideas of what could possibly be tormenting her. Instead put the rosary in her purse and began getting up as soon as the train neared it’s next stop.  
She moved towards the door of the carriage before looking back at him thoughtfully.  
_“It won’t do you good to be so dismissive, mariachi.” She warned “Much less on these tracks...For those who are disrespectful will face the wrath of El Esqueleto Errante”_  
Ernesto stared at the woman before doubling over laughing.  
The what now? Another new ghost story?  
His laughs were drowned out by the noise of the train stopping and the door opening, but he could see the glare on the woman’s face even through his tear-blurred eyesight.  
Honestly, people and their superstitions...Women and their nonsensical need to warn people of things that did not exist!  
Wives tales.  
Tall tales.  
Pure make-believe!  
The train left the station a few minutes later, leaving Ernesto completely and utterly alone for the remainder of the ride.  
More than halfway through the ride to the next stop, his stop, he couldn’t help chuckle at the silliness of it all.  
Wandering skeletons, now that was an idea without a leg to stand on!  
How could something without muscles or flesh walk around? Much less under the intense heat and cold of the desert days and nights?  
Surely nothing like that could ever happen!  
Or so he thought…Because, very close to the next town, to Mexico City, Ernesto found himself being thrown forward very violently when something collided with the front of the train.  


He didn’t quite recall ALL of what happened, just that he’d woken up and realized he was laying on the ceiling of the cabin, which had been upturned somehow.  
Thoughts of derailing entered his head, before something caught his attention.  
The ground was shaking.  
Ernesto de la Cruz did not believe in the supernatural, but when the train cabin began to move and was effortlessly lifted off the ground to rise 80 feet into the air, held by blackened fingers up towards a blinding yellow light, he sure wished he could call it anything but a spirit.  
A gigantic, horrific skeleton with ashen colored bones and glowing markings and eye sockets.  
That wasn’t the worst part of it...No, because Ernesto wasn’t paying attention to the thing’s size or markings or anything of the sort...He was staring at the hair and goatee fashioned in such a familiar way, and the fact he was so close to where he had buried that damned homesick traidor, and the fact he could do nothing but scream and clamber to the back of the train cabin as the creature peered in.  
Ernesto remembers what happened afterwards in small flashes. The train is once more on the ground, no longer on the rails, the monster is far behind, crouching besides it, Ernesto is running towards the city and in too much of a frantic panic to care to see if it’s giving chase.  
In his mind, the monster has to be, because it was HECTOR and he was back somehow and he was out to get HIM. Out for Ernesto’s BLOOD, no doubt.  
The state of the locomotive was proof of this to him. Completely destroyed, bent out of shape and burning. Stepped on by a vengeful spirit so as to take away any means of Ernesto’s escape back to civilization.  
Ernesto did not believe in the supernatural...But now? Now he’s holed up in Mexico City far too scared to take a train and in desperate need of an exorcist that won’t ask too many questions.

 

### \---{At the market in Santa Cecilia}---

 

Julio didn’t much like Rodrigo Sanchez or his friends. They were bigger than him, louder than him and much ruder than him as well. They also liked to scare his baby sister, Rosita, with those stupid stories of theirs. The ones about the scary ghosts that were said to haunt places because of terrible horrible things that happened to them. Things that they now enacted upon anyone who they came across.  
Rodrigo Sanchez and his friends, his goons, were awfully fond of telling Rosita the story of El Jinete Sin Corazón, that one always made her cry.  
But today they had a new one, and almost immediately Julio’s poor hermanita burst into tears and he couldn’t really do anything but hug her because he was outnumbered.  
_“Oye! Qué está pasando aquí?”_ Julio became immediately relieved when he hears Coco run over to his aid, although he hopes this will end here and not go any further.  
Knowing Rodrigo however, it’s very likely it won’t.  
_“Hey look Rodrigo! It’s Vieja Rivera’s daughter!”_ laughed one of the other boys, the one who’s name always evaded Julio’s memory.  
_“Socorrita! Still polishing shoes or did you start making them in your basement as well?”_ Rodrigo taunted with that stupid grin of his as Coco joined Julio and the tearful Rosita.  
She didn’t look very happy.  
_“Cállate, Rodrigo! My mamá does not make her shoes in the basement! She has her very own shop!”_ Coco retorted angrily before turning to look at Julio and Rosita. _“What did you tell them this time? Another one of your stupid stories about the heartless rider?”_  
_“Nah, those are way too old, like your old bruja. We got some newer tales that’ll really rattle your bones!”_ Rodrigo replied, that infuriating grin only seeming to grow as he looked down at the shorter girl.  


Everyone in Santa Cecilia knew that Rodrigo Sanchez and Socorro Rivera never quite saw eye to eye. Coco couldn’t stand bullies and Rodrigo couldn’t stand girls, so it was no surprise that they mixed as well as fire and water.  
Of course Julio knew Coco was much smarter than the larger boy and often resolved things by walking away with her chin up and her shoulders set.  
She would then proceed to cheer Rosita up and tell her nothing bad could happen to her, because Santa Cecilia was protected from evil spirits. She always sounded sure as well, which boggled Julio’s mind a bit, but then again she was an optimist.  
She always took the higher ground, but Julio also knew Coco could be very temperamental if you pushed her buttons just right.  
It seemed like today Rodrigo was adamant to do just that.  
_“You ever heard of El Esqueleto Errante?”_ Rodrigo asked, much like what he’d done before when he’d told Julio and Rosita the same tale.  
Coco seemed to pause at this, something in her eyes faltering a bit before she put up her defences back up.  
_“El Esqueleto Errante?”_ she asked.  
_“Well yeah! It’s all everyone who comes by train talks about now! No more crying woman or rider, it’s all about the giant skeleton that’s been seen following the tracks!”_  
Julio rolled his eyes, tightening his grip reassuringly when Rosita sniffled loudly. He hoped listening to the story a second time might ease her fright a bit.  
Nothing could stay scary for long if you heard it one too many times.  
_“That’s...Why are they talking about him? Uh, the skeleton I mean?”_ Coco asked, which made Julio raise an eyebrow. That was...Slightly out of character for her. Normally she’d dismiss Rodrigo’s stories. Was she humoring him?  
_“Because of what he does when he finds lost people! Duh!”_ Rodrigo laughed. His goons followed suit, snorting and squealing like pigs as they did so.  
It made Julio’s blood boil with irritation. _“Heck, they say it’s not just people either, it can be moving trains as well!”_  
_“What does he do to them?”_ Coco insisted once more, sounding concerned.  
_“Niña estúpida, qué le hace un monstruo gigante a la gente? Los mata, por supuesto!”_ Rodrigo exclaimed, his arms raising up suddenly to make Coco back up a bit. She didn’t budge, which only seemed to annoy him. He carried on to try and get a reaction out of her. _“They say that if it finds you wandering by the tracks, it’ll scoop you up in those creepy huge skeletal hands and eat you right up like candy! And that once, it even crushed an entire train because it felt like it! Anyone who’s caught out in it’s turf is asking to die!”_  


Julio glared at the older boy, holding his sister close for comfort. He was getting sick of listening to his voice and to his friends’s laughter.  
They were so obnoxious! Really, a giant skeleton eating people? They didn’t have stomachs! How could they possibly eat? And they didn’t have muscles, so moving and breaking things would be super hard.  
His uncle was a médico, he’d told Julio that muscles were important to do things like move and grab things. Without them, a skeleton couldn’t possibly wander around.  
Also, skeletons couldn’t get that big. It wasn’t possible.  
Rodrigo was wrong.  
_“That’s not true. He wouldn’t do that.”_ Coco crossed her arms as she glared up at Rodrigo. Her reaction made everyone else a little bit confused, everyone but Rodrigo who raised an eyebrow in defiance.  
_“How would you know?”_ he asked.  
_“Because he’s my friend. And he’s super nice and not at all scary or mean. You’re just lying.”_ Coco replied, chin up and stance set with certainty.  
A giant skeleton was her friend? Or was she just saying that to calm Rosita?  
Julio couldn’t help wonder…  
_“He’s your friend? Pfff ahah! Eso es hilarante!”_ Rodrigo exclaimed, laughing loudly in Coco’s face as he did so. “As if a giant would ever think a tiny little brat like you was worth being friends with! You’re just as crazy as your bruja of a mamá!”  
_“I’m not crazy, and neither is my mamá! You’re just a bully and a lier!”_ Coco retorted, glaring daggers at the taller boy. Julio began to worry that the argument would worsen.  
And it did.  
_“Sure you are! No girl who’s right in the head would go around polishing shoes or making them. Papá said women don’t do much, they’re not smart enough.”_  
_“Are too! My mamá is super smart and she makes really good shoes. You’re just jealous!”_  
_“Jealous? Of a brat that doesn’t even HAVE a papá?”_ Rodrigo smiled cruelly as he stared Coco down. _“Don’t make me laugh…”_  


Julio gawked at the boy, Rosita gasping by his side. That was a low blow, even for Rodrigo. No one really ever dared talk about Coco’s father, it usually did not end well, specially if Señora Imelda was around.  
It was the quickest way to get la chancla to the head, and also the quickest way to make Coco upset.  
Even now Julio could already see color blossoming on her cheeks as she tried to keep her composure.  
_“Cállate!”_ She warned, voice shaky with anger.  
_“I’ll bet that the reason you don’t even have a papá is because of El Esqueleto Errante!”_ Rodrigo pressed on _“I’ll bet he got eaten up without a thought, or crushed underfoot like the miserable little cucaracha he was!”_  
_“Rodrigo cállate!”_ Coco yelled, face red and body shaking. Julio wanted to pat her on the shoulder to ease her temper. He wanted to say something comforting but he was at a loss for what to say.  
_“What? Can’t handle the fact your papá won’t ever come back to you or your puta--”_  
And that had been the last straw.  
Coco screamed and flung herself at the boy, who was twice her size, hitting and biting and just screaming in pure anguish  
It frightened Julio and Rosita more than any ghost story could.  
In the end, Coco’s uncles Oscar and Felipe, had to run over to break up the fight and pull their niece away from the market.  
All because Rodrigo couldn’t keep his big fat mouth closed.

 

### \---{At Mariachi Plaza in Santa Cecilia}---

 

Oscar and Felipe weren’t too happy with the situation they’d gotten themselves into this time around. They’d gone to the market to get a headstart on stocking up the shop for when Imelda would come back from her weekend trip to the next town over.  
Coco had gone with them, although this time they’d kept her under constant watch due to the incident with the Sanchez boy last week.  
Things had been going fine until they’d noticed a small comotion close to Mariachi Plaza.  
Normally the twins would avoid the plaza like the plague, but really...Imelda was away and there was no music playing. What harm could it do to sate their curiosity and see what was going on?  
They should have known better, really, but they were still young at heart.  
Apparently, during the night, something large had upturned and damaged a few stalls, leaving a mighty mess to be cleaned up by the owners.  
The fountain in the middle of the plaza was also damaged, the water flowing out into the street like an artificial river.  
Everyone was in an uproar about it and one man was claiming some absurd things.  
_“Este es el trabajo del diablo! Él nos ha enviado El Esqueleto Errante para castigar nuestros pecados!”_ Señor Ricardo cried as he clung to his bible like a safety line.  
_“Again with that? Ricardo you can’t believe such tales! They are false!”_ Dõna Florbella, the wife of one of the owners of the ruined stalls, said as she eyed the superstitious man with an incredulous look. _“It was probably just a large animal that wandered into town and did all of this.”_  
_“An animal? What animal can break stonework Florbella?! Only a dangerous spirit like El Esqueleto Errante could do such a thing!”_  
_“Oh por favor!”_  
The argument carried like that for a while, just back and forth banter between various people. Some who believed in spirits, others who did not.  
It was somewhat amusing to watch, until Felipe noticed the discomfort on his small niece’s face.  
_“Qué pasa, pequeña? Te sientes mal?”_ He asked as he knelt down besides Coco, smiling encouragingly so as to ease her nerves a bit.  
The girl shook her head as a means to say no and then looked towards the fountain.  
Felipe belatedly remembered that Hector used to play for her in the afternoon seated by that very same fountain. Seeing it broken was probably upsetting for her.  
Cursing under his breath, Felipe got back onto his feet and looked at Oscar.  
His twin frowned sadly in understanding, before looking back at the arguing crowd.  
That is when things began going wrong.  
_“Hey, aren’t those the Riveras? The shoemakers?”_ One of the mariachis who was watching the argument murmured to another, his friend most likely.  
_“Hm? Uh oh yeah, Imelda Rivera’s brothers right? And her daughter too.”_ The other murmured back _“The ones that hate music.”_  
_“Really, who could ever hate music? Didn’t that woman marry un guitarrista? That weird fellow who used to follow Ernesto de la Cruz around and left town a while back?”_  
_“Well if she hated music then it’s no wonder he left. Heck I would leave if my wife was like that!”_  
_“Yeah, me too amigo, me too. And I’d never come back either, no one needs that sort of person in their life…”_  


The twins felt something bitter and disgusting rise in the back of their throats as they listened in. It wasn’t uncommon to get a few rude people talking under their breath about their older sister, it never got any better either, but this was an annoying place to hear such things.  
They had half a mind to march over and tell them off, really they did, until Señor Ricardo took notice of them. Or rather, he noticed Coco standing near them.  
With an angry look and an accusing pointing finger, Ricardo Sanchez began to yell at their niece.  
_“YOU! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”_  
The crowd was startled at the sudden change of tone, all turning to look at the stunned Riveras. Coco yelped in fright as the attention was diverted to her, shrinking away from the pointed finger.  
_“Señor Ricardo!”_ Dõna Florbella yelled back, looking quite angry. _“Don’t yell at the poor niña!”_  
_“Ever since you came back from that stupid trip you’ve brought nothing but trouble!”_ Ricardo Sanchez yelled, moving towards the trio of Riveras in an aggressive manner. The twins quickly put themselves between the towering man and their small niece, who still peeked from behind them. _“You bother my son and his friends, you run around doing a boy’s job, and you go around saying things you shouldn’t! You’ve attracted the attention of the devil! Now we’ve got a giant angry spirit roaming around our small town!”_  
_“Ricardo!”_  
_“You should have just stayed missing!”_  
_“RICARDO!”_  


The twins decided they’d had enough after that. Felipe quickly kicked the man on shins while Oscar picked up Coco and began to run.  
The three Riveras retreated from Mariachi Plaza for the last time, deciding it was probably best to keep away.  
Imelda would be back on monday and Coco was shaken up by the whole event.  
How would they explain to her that they’d disobeyed her orders and gone somewhere they’d been told to specifically not go? Especially after it went so terribly?  
It wasn’t going to be easy...Still the two couldn’t help wonder…  
What had happened at Mariachi Plaza? How had to stalls and fountain been broken? Why was Ricardo Sanchez so eager to point his finger at their niece?  
It made them recall all those odd gifts she’d been getting every night. The ones that showed up on the balcony.  
Maybe that was why?  
They weren’t sure. They were honestly a little scared to find out.

 

### \---{Coco’s balcony in Santa Cecilia}---

 

The encounter at the market and the one in Mariachi Plaza had left Coco with more than one question about the nature of her unusual friend.  
What Rodrigo had said about him, about what he did to people, and then what he’d suggested happened to her papá...She couldn’t stop thinking about it.  
And then what happened in Mariachi Plaza with Rodrigo’s papá had made her even more nervous.  
Had she really attracted something dangerous to town?  
Was her sweet friend not as friendly as she’d thought?  
She’d tried not to let it bother her, but as the days passed and mamá’s return home became closer and closer, she couldn’t help it.  
Señor Esqueleto was her friend but...Coco couldn’t deny he was clumsy. His gifts from before, they’d started out small and simple but then he’d gotten excited about giving her more and more until he’d made mistakes.  
The bicycle wasn’t too bad, but the flower cart and Juan the bird had been horrible to deal with.  
It took hours and a lot of help to get the cart down, and Coco could still remember Juan’s pained chirps when he’d been dropped into her hands.  
And the blood...There’d been so much blood and she’d screamed.  
She could still remember the startled look on her friend’s face when she’d run back inside to get mamá. It was almost as if he’d not realized he’d done something wrong.  


There were other times where Señor Esqueleto’s clumsiness had been an issue. He’d bump into things and break them. He’d broken some vases when he’d put a hand on her balcony to pick her up, and he’d stepped on a lamppost one night and cried out when it had gotten stuck between two of the bones on his foot.  
All in all, she couldn’t deny that he’d probably been the cause of the damage in Mariachi Plaza...Even if it hadn’t been on purpose.  
But really...She’d never even considered the fact he could hurt someone.  
It just, he’d always been so sweet and gentle! How could he be the monster Rodrigo said he was?  
And then it started to bother her.  
Coco began to hide when her large friend showed up. She could see the lights of his eyes shining through her window and she could hear a saddened rumble as he tried to look for her, but Coco never had the heart to go outside to see him after.  
She had questions, but she was too scared to ask them.  
What if Rodrigo was right? What if Señor Esqueleto was really a monster and he’d get upset if she asked? What if...What if he’d really eaten her papá?  
Was he the reason why he hadn’t come home yet? Why he hadn’t written her any more letters?  
Coco didn’t want it to be true.  
So she hid, and hid, and hid a bit more, until one night she couldn’t anymore.  
The yellow lights filled her windows like before, but this time when the giant skeleton couldn’t find any trace of her, as she’d hidden under her bed, he began to cry.  


Coco’s heart sunk as she heard the heart breaking sound.  
It struck her suddenly that her trying to run away from her worries had probably been upsetting her friend, and that maybe she should have just sucked it up and asked instead of worrying him.  
Scrambling to get out from under the bed, Coco got up quickly and ran for the darkened balcony. There she could see the giant dark-boned skeleton covering his face with his hands.  
_“Señor Esqueleto, please don't cry! I’m here!”_ She called out, having to shield her eyes when the blinding yellow light came back.  
As her eyes adjusted to the lighting, she could hear a soft hum as the skeleton calmed down, seemed to be relieved with her presence.  
_“I’m sorry...I shouldn’t have been hiding from you…”_ she found herself apologizing when she saw his hand outstretched, ready for her to clamber on.  
As she sat in his palm and allowed him to bring her to eye level, she couldn’t help gulp when he made a confused noise and cocked his head slightly to the side. The universal gesture of confusion. _“I...I’m sorry. It’s just...Some people were saying really bad things about you. And...And I couldn’t help but...I was being stupid. I’m sorry.”_  
Señor Esqueleto hummed reassuringly, smiling in that genuinely kind way of his. He forgave her, but his head was still cocked to the side, so she was sure he was waiting for an explanation.  
So she gave him one.  
_“There’s this boy that shows up at the market...He’s really nasty and he likes to bully my friends. I was saying that you...That you hurt people, and, and that you eat them.”_  
The smile fell from her friend’s face, giving way to a surprised look and then a perplexed one. He seemed to find the story just as absurd as she’d done back then.  
_“And then...Y-You know how I...How I talk about my papá? H-How he stopped w-writing after he left?”_ Coco stammered as she thought about it. Should she really ask? She didn’t want to. But she had to know. _“T-That nasty boy? The bully? He said that, he said that you p-probably k-killed him and that’s why he never came back...A-and I thought, I t-thought maybe you had but...b-but not on p-purpose. L-Like how you h-hurt Juan by a-accident. A-and…”_  


And she could see it happening now.  
Her papá coming back only to get stepped on by her oblivious friend. Never to return home to sing to her because he was too small for Señor Esqueleto to see.  
Or maybe he’d been on the train and her friend had damaged the tracks, or even stepped on the train or...He’d stepped on flower carts before. He’d stepped on Señorita Bianca’s pet goat too, and that had been terrible because he’d been so upset about it and Coco had to tell him where to get water to clean the mess.  
She couldn’t help burst into tears as she imagined what would have remained of her papá. Nothing but a horrible bloodied smudge on the ground.  


A loud horrible noise cut her crieds, forcing her to screw her eyes shut and grab onto her ears. The windows rattled violently and cracked before the horrific vibrations stopped.  
Señor Esqueleto had tried to speak again, and immediately regret it.  
He looked just as upset about the ideas as Coco was. And the worst part is that giving her an answer wouldn’t be easy.  
Asking hadn’t helped at all to ease her worries.  
Until, until he seemed to get an idea.  
Very carefully, the giant skeleton placed her back onto the balcony before kneeling down to do something. There was a terrible grinding noise for a few seconds before he seemed satisfied with something and gotten up again.  
Coco found herself on the palm of her friend’s hand, looking down at something.  
Writing.  


**‘WhAt DiD yOuR pApÁ lOoK lIkE?’**  


The writing was...atrocious...Much much worse than Julio’s chicken scratch, but she could just about make out the question.  
Her friend knew how to write!  
_“Papá is really tall, taller than mamá and me! And, and he has nice hair, like yours and a funny beard like yours too! He’s also really sweet and has a big nose and big ears. He’s got really pretty eyelashes too, longer than mamá’s and he’s really skinny like a scarecrow. I think he’s really pretty, even if some of the other nasty ladies in town say he’s ugly…”_  
It had been the first time she’d described her papá to anyone in a long time, but the giant skeleton seemed to drink in the description before crouching once more to write a reply on the ground.  
The sound was louder now, since Coco was clinging to his fingers on his other hand so close to the source, but the reply was worth it in the end.  


**‘I hAVeN’T sEeN aNyOnE lIkE tHaT wHeN i WaLk ArOuNd’**  


So he hadn’t seen her papá! So maybe they’d never crossed paths before! And come to think of it, he never really got too far from Santa Cecilia so that meant papá was still out there somewhere...Coco just had to wait. Because she knew he’d come back. He had to. He’d promised, and papá never broke his promises! She just had to wait.  
And she had to have more faith in her friend...Sure he was big and clumsy, but that didn’t make him any less of a sweetheart.  
Even now he’d been upset but forgotten that completely just to help her feel better, when he should have been angry with her for avoiding him because of Rodrigo’s dumb lies.  
Really, Coco shouldn’t believe someone else’s tall tales about her very tall friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Third entry for the Gashadokuro AU fic oneshots! This time focusing more on the tall tales that follow Hector around. Some of them are quite absurd honestly...Where did they even get it in their heads that he ate people? or that he liked smashing things for fun? Hector is just really really clumsy, is all!]


	4. El plan de Ernesto y la promesa de Héctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Coco comes across a small problem relating to her gigantic friend’s nightly visits, Ernesto begins plotting something quite nefarious in order to get rid of Hector once and for all, and Hector makes a promise that he might not be able to keep.

    There was no denying how much Socorro Rivera loved her two best friends, siblings Julio and Rosita. The two were always there for her, no matter the circumstances.  
She could talk to them about just about anything, be it her concern for the bitterness that steadily grew in her mamá’s heart with each passing day where her papá remained away from home, the anger she felt towards the older kids who relentlessly tormented her and made fun of her family, or even of just how much she missed her papá and how he’d sing to her every day and every night.  
Coco could recall whole afternoons where she’d confide to them the stories she could recall of better times. Those very few years of her life where mamá and papá would sing and dance and laugh like there was no care in the world…   
She’d tell them of the letters containing poems and songs, and decorated with small doodles Coco knew her papá had absentmindedly added to the paper, mind wandering away from body as he carefully considered his words, while also letting his imagination run wild.   
Her favourite doodle was that of a xolo puppy he’d seen on the streets one day. A cute little thing that had followed him around for a while, before tío Ernesto scared it off. Tío Ernesto really hated xolos, which was odd since he liked chihuahuas so much.  
Maybe it was because xolos didn’t have soft hair to pet?  
Regardless of his distaste, the puppy had caught her papá’s attention enough that he’d doodled it on the letter so that Coco could picture it perfectly.

    Mamá didn’t much care for the drawing, or the letters, at least not anymore. Once upon a time, she would sit down with Coco and read them to her, and then carefully turn the paper so that she could see the drawing more clearly. Those had been the days where her mother still openly loved and missed her father, heart unmarred by bitter hatred that was fed daily by the gossip of housewives and preconseptuous nuns. Stories of her loving father leaving his family for fame and younger women, like kindling to a fire.  
Poisonous and vile falsities dreamt up by people who couldn’t keep their nose out of another’s lives and personal adversities.  
These were all things Coco confided to her dearest friends. She was never afraid to talk to them about matters that would otherwise be ignored and let to fester.  
There was, however, a topic that she didn’t really talk about with the two:  
Señor Esqueleto and his nightly visits.  
    In general, her gigantic skeleton friend was...Well, to put it lightly, a hard topic… Especially after what happened with Rodrigo Sanchez.  
The older kids kept their distance after the incident, but that didn’t mean they didn’t talk about it behind her back, focusing on what she’d claimed when she’d been trying to calm Rosita.  
She meant it of course, that Señor Esqueleto would never hurt someone on purpose.  
Just because he was bigger didn’t mean he was a bully, much less the monster they claimed he was. That was just loco!  
His gentleness was why Coco liked him so much!  
He could be just as terrible as Rodrigo and his friends, if not worse because of his size, and instead he went out of his way to be kind.  
Sure he was clumsy and that often caused trouble (He’d admitted to having derailed a train by accident, which was where those silly stories of a monster skeleton came from to begin with!) but he tried to fix his mistakes whenever he could.  
Still...As nice and caring as Señor Esqueleto was, how could she ever explain this to her friends? Her mamá and tíos didn’t believe her when she told them, nor any of the adults at the market for the matter, so could it be possible that Julio and Rosita wouldn’t either?  
Julio didn’t believe in magic and Rosita was easily startled, so making it seem like Coco wasn’t crazy, nor that the giant skeleton posed no threat, would be near impossible!  
But, then again, these were her best friends!  
They should believe her!  
They weren’t as closed minded as the adults in Santa Cecilia and she trusted them!   
So why did she feel so hesitant about sharing her secret with them?  
She didn’t know, but she’d have to reconsider this much sooner than she’d expected.  
    It was a calm afternoon in May. Three hours after lunch, while Coco was sitting besides her mother in the workshop, Imelda interrupted her shoe making lessons to bring her some news.  
  _“I spoke with Julio and Rosita’s parents this morning.”_ she said as she carefully set down her tools, moving to inspect the seams she’d completed on her latest project. A pair of riding boots.  
She was waiting for a response, if the delay in the topic was anything to go by.  
  _“You did?”_ Coco offered, peering up at her mamá with interest.  
It’s not that her mother and her friends’ parents didn’t talk often, far from it! It was more that they rarely did unless they were at the market or much later in the afternoon when the shop was closing. It was the only time they had, well, time to do so.  
  _“Yes.”_ Imelda replied after putting down the boot she’d been examining. She turned her attention fully towards Coco, a small smile on her lips. “It seems something’s come up and they need to go to the family ranch to deal with a few personal matters that will take at least two weeks to manage.”  
_“Oh...Is everything ok? Is Julio’s and Rosita’s tía alright?”_ Coco frowned, worrying for the gentle old lady that had visited on the last Dia de Los Muertos. The one who’d given her and her friends a few homemade sweets under their parents’ nose. Dona Carmelita. A very sweet old woman. Coco hoped she hadn’t fallen ill after her husband passed.  
 “Rest your head mija, Dona Carmelita is fine. This has to do with Señor Roberto’s passing. The family has to tend to his last will...However, because there will be no children attending, there was an issue with what to do with Julio and Roita.”  
This made Coco perk up.  
Julio and Rosita weren’t allowed to go?  
  _“Where will they stay if their mamá and papá are away?”_ She asked out of curiosity.  
This is when Imelda’s small smile seemed to grow.  
 “Why, I’ve offered for them to stay at our house while their parents are away on business. That way, they will be looked after and I will be able to send a letter informing them that their children are in good health.”  
Coco couldn’t help beam at the idea as she listened to her mother.  
Julio and Rosita were going to be staying at their house for two whole weeks? That was amazing! They’d be able to do so many things together!  
The young girl was practically jumping for joy at the thought.  
  _“They get to sleep over? That’s great!”_ She cried out happily, which made her mother chuckle.  
 “Indeed...Now, how about we stop your lesson for now and you go on and tell them the good news? I asked their parents to let you be the one to tell them.”  
_“Thank you mamá!”_ Coco called out as she ran for the door.  
    How exciting! She’d get to hang out with her friends for two whole weeks! That was practically an eternity! They’d be able to have slumber parties and tell spooky fun stories and have all sorts of adventures!  
Nothing could ruin this for Coco!  
And that’s when it downed on her, halfway out the door, that at least ONE THING could actually spoil her fun…  
Señor Esqueleto...He visited every night and her two best friends were coming over to stay two week’s worth of nights in her room.  
That...Was going to be a massive problem.  
 “....O-Oh no…” The youngest member of the Rivera family felt her heart drop. If her friend showed up during the night he might spook her best friends! And then they’d cause a lot of noise, and then mamá and her tíos would wake up, and then there’d be BIG TROUBLE for everyone.  
What was she going to do?!

 

* * *

 

    Unbeknownst to the young and worried Coco, far away from Santa Cecilia in Mexico City, Ernesto de la Cruz was fretting over his own dilemma.  
It had been days since he last left the hotel room he’d holed himself in ever since his horrific encounter with the gigantic skeleton that he knew to be his deceased ex-partner, Hector Rivera.  
The event had shaken him so terribly that Ernesto hadn’t dared set foot outside, for fear of being found and cornered by the tremendously sized spirit that he was so certain was out looking for some revenge.  
This of course, was a huge setback for him.  
He’d just reached a very delicate stage in his musical career where he NEEDED to keep the public hooked. A stage where he couldn’t afford to become some crazy hermit holed up in an hotel room, mumbling insane stories about vengeful spirits the size of mountains.  
Or so his agent, Marcelo, insisted.  
  _“Ernesto it has been ages since you’ve last performed! If you keep this up, your fame will plummet faster than an acrobat with butterfingers!”_ Exclaimed the thin, wiry man, of physic that Ernesto found to be similar to Hector’s.  
He’d always found it morbidly fascinating to observe the man’s movements. More refined than that of his ex-best friend, but less heartfelt. He was less taller, his jawline less sharp, but the similarities were ironic in many ways.  
One would even say this was Ernesto’s way of showing he missed Hector, by mingling with people that reminded him of him...But no, Marcelo was nothing like his ex-partner in crime. Marcelo was much more conniving and clearly a money-grabber.  
A serpent masquerading as a gentle garden snake, ready to bite you if things didn’t work his way...Like now, where he disregarded Ernesto’s fears as soon as he smelled a weakness that could ruin them both.  “You have to pull your weight amigo, or else there won’t be much of a future for you.”  
_“I know Marcelo, I know! You've been hammering away at the topic for quite some time now_ ** _amigo_** _”_ He hissed, spitting the last world as if it were bile in his mouth. Hell would freeze over before he ever considered the greedy bastard as a friend. “But it’s just...I’ve taken ill, as you can see.”  
It wasn’t a complete lie. He’d made himself sick with worry just from the thought of those massive phalanges, and the rags covering up the ashen ribs, spine and pelvis. And those soul-piercing sockets that burnt with blinding yellow light...  
Ernesto looked terrible. Disheveled and pale, clothes in terrible need of a wash.  
He looked like he belonged out in the streets with the homeless instead of a lit up stage.  
  _“I can see that, yes.”_ Marcelo conceded as he wrinkled his nose in disgust as he looked him up and down. Those dark eyes of his infuriating Ernesto with their judging spark. _“What I ask of you is that you get better_ ** _faster_**!”  
    Ernesto rolled his eyes and turned to face away from his manager. He should have hired the other one, the short stubby man with the peg leg. At least he’d had less of an attitude.  
Still, hindsight cast aside, Ernesto did worry for what may happen to his career if he didn’t indeed get “better”.  
But how? How did one deal with a haunting on such a large scale?  
Going to church hadn’t helped at all.  
There were still stories of the beast roaming near the tracks, so any attempt to pray for protection and for Hector’s wicked soul to go away, hadn’t fixed the problem.  
Ernesto couldn’t afford to risk another encounter. He’d been lucky the last time, but who’s to say the odds would keep favoring him?  
What if the next time, it wasn’t the locomotive he crushed, but Ernesto’s compartment?  
A shudder ran down his spine as he thought about getting turned to canned soup by a gigantic skeleton foot.  
That was not a dignifying way to go…  
    No, he refused to be an ant in the presence of his ex-best friend’s monstrous spirit. He’d won the first time after he’d pulled all the weight, he’d win again even with such terrible odds!  
Hector wouldn’t take his well deserved fame from him.  
Dead or alive.  
He’d just have to find the monster’s weakness, is all!  
In fairytales there was always the brave hero who killed the beast, always something to give him the upper hand.  
And, as Ernesto considered this, he got an idea of what might be the skeleton’s core weakness.  
  _“You know what...You’re right.”_ He said with a smirk as he turned to face Marcelo once more. The other seemed taken aback by the renewed vigor of his words. “How about this: You work with the PR team, pull some strings, do your magic and set up for my tour’s next grand destination. Then, in three weeks, I’ll be ready to be received by my adoring fans who’ve missed me so terribly after learning I was recovering from a terrible, most horrific illness that nearly took my life.”  
He circled around the other man, maintaining eye contact as he smiled and carried on explaining his idea.  
Marcelo seemed intrigued.  
  _“And then, after these three weeks of rumours and brilliant PR marketing have finished, BOOM. A set of posters with the exact location of my next concert.”_ He waved his hands with grandeur in his intent. Setting the image for his manager. “Ernesto de la Cruz! The Grand Homecoming Concert! Santa Cecilia’s greatest musician!”  
He span around and walked towards the window, right index finger tapping away thoughtfully on his chin.  
 “Some words could be changed here and there... That artist who did my posters for that one concert in Mérida could be in charge of working on the finished thing, add some subliminal messages to entice the public... We’ve got ourselves a sensational comeback mí amigo…” And an opportunity to get rid of a few thorns in his side.  
Because if there was one thing that he knew was Hector’s weakness, it was those two girls of his. If he could make them, say, “mysteriously” disappear in some sort of terrible accident, then the monstrous ghost would follow them into the afterlife.  
That had to be the solution for all his troubles.

 

* * *

 

    Coco was at a loss for what to do. She’d been forced to swallow down her worries when she’d gone to Julio and Rosita’s house to tell them about their parents’ plan.  
The two had been excited of course, unaware of their friend’s plight as her mind raced to come up with a solution for her problem.  
She would either have to tell them, or she’d have to figure out a way to keep them from seeing Señor Esqueleto.  
But the question now was how. How do you hide a colossal skeleton from someone?  
    As she walked around town in deep thought, Coco pondered on this.  
It couldn’t be harder than hide and seek, right? Just make sure the “seekers” didn’t find the one hiding. But, then again, her larger friend wouldn’t be aware of the fact he needed to hide in the first place. No, trying to hide Señor Esqueleto wouldn’t work. The glow of his eyes would be a dead giveaway on it’s own.  
She’d have to tell them. There was no other way.  
    Turning a corner that led to the market, Coco stopped in her tracks when she saw something up ahead. Another crowd, like the one from that day when Señor Sanchez yelled at her.  
The young Rivera girl gulped as she contemplated investigating the matter.  
Last time, when she’d gone to see what had caused the crowd to form in the first place, Coco had been saddened by the state in which the gigantic skeleton had left the fountain.  
She’d brought it to his attention that same night where she’d interrogated him, going so far as to mentioning how many fond memories she’d had of the fountain.   
He’d looked quite guilty, or as guilty as a skeleton could look, and admitted to having not been looking where he was going. And then the mess he’d made afterwards was caused when he’d crouched down trying to fix the fountain, only to bump into the stalls and damage them as well.  
In the end, he’d opted with leaving it as it was since he couldn’t seem to fix it without making it worse.  
Could it be her friend had once again made another huge mess?  
    Coco pondered on it for a while before shaking her head and moving off to head back home. She could worry about that later, no point risking another scene if Señor Sanchez was around.  
As she walked along, she listened to the murmurs of the crowd, stopping only when she heard the exchange between two ladies.  
  _“What a horrible sight...Do you really think Ricardo was right about hostile spirits?”_ One of the ladies asked the other, who was quick to cross herself and hiss at her friend under her breath just barely loud enough that Coco could hear.  
_“Dios mío, cállate!”_ She scolded “The devil hears those who speak of his work!”  
_“Cálmate, solo preguntaba.”_ The first woman sighed as she straightened the hem of her dress. “It just seems, impossible...”  
_“I’ve seen the drunkards of Santa Cecilia, Silvia, its very likely that they probably caused the ruckus to begin with.” Said_ the one clutching at the beads of her rosary, seeming far too nervous to believe her own words. “You heard what the police said. They could barely understand what that man was saying...”  
Coco felt her heart drop into her stomach.  
The police were involved?  
What had happened the night before?  
 “Pobre señor García...Su esposa estará tan molesta cuando llegue a casa, solo para descubrir que su esposo ha sufrido un gran susto!”  
_“Pobre? No me hagas reír, Silvia! Ese hombre es un cerdo!”_ the woman with the rosary laughed, shaking her head at her friend. “Sí, aunque es trágico que Madalena regrese de visitar a sus familiares, sólo para descubrir por otros que su esposo ha sido institucionalizado, no se puede negar que su esposo no era un santo. En todo caso, esto es un castigo divino!”  
 “Divine punish--Teresa! As distasteful as senõr García may be, no one deserves to be scared to the point of becoming a bumbling madman! You heard him screaming about the giant skeleton, that is no way for a kind woman like Madalena to see her husband!”  
At this point Coco moved on, not even daring to glance towards the crowd as she moved on. She was still worried about Julio and Rosita, yes, but she had at least one night before they came over. She needed to talk to Señor Esqueleto about his clumsiness.  
One thing was breaking a few stalls and a fountain. Another was scaring the town butcher to near death!

 

* * *

 

    Marcelo had gone off to do just as Ernesto had told him, leaving the mariachi alone with his thoughts and schemes.  
That had to be it, Imelda and the girl, they had to be the key piece into getting rid of Hector once and for all.  
He just needed time to prepare, is all!  
    Really, it was for the best. What right did the dead have to remain in the living world? None! It was unnatural, unprecedented, an abomination!  
Hector was an abomination! His presence an affront to mankind.  
He had to be dealt with.  
Not just because he didn’t belong among the living anymore, but also to protect Ernesto’s integrity and well-being.  
Just the knowledge that the monster was out there had nearly ruined him, and that simply wouldn’t do!  
    Ernesto was in reality, quite appalled by all of this. He hadn’t been much of a believer of the paranormal. He’d gone to church like any good kid should and he’d even prayed every night just like his father told him he had to.  
But really, did going to church every sunday really account for much more than a few beliefs? The strength of a god felt comforting, but the possibility of hell had always frightened him silly as a child, until he realized how oddly absurd it all was.  
And then Hector had to ruin the small bliss he’d found in not believing all that bullcrap everyone talked about of the afterlife. Beliefs he’d been spoonfed as a child.  
And now he had to go back to that shithole of a town, Santa Cecilia, just to get this to stop. Only then would he be able to go back into a stable and comfortable life as a musician.  
    Hector’s wife and daughter would ultimately pay the price for his insolence, but that was all for the best really. What could a temperamental widow like Imelda, or the stupid brat that had distracted his best friend so much, ever offer to the world?  
Nothing, that’s what!  
The only time Imelda had contributed even a little, was by having at least a decent taste in guitar designs. The white calavera guitar was a staple of Ernesto’s image as a musician, and that at least he owed Imelda.  
Not enough to spare her from his plan, of course, but just enough that he’d at least make her look decent in the eyes of the town after she tragically passed away.  
He’d bet even Hector would be grateful for a dignifying death for his wife.  
  _“You’d best content yourself with your familia, amigo...After all it’s all, it’s what you died trying to get in the end.”_ Ernesto muttered darkly to himself as he passed around the hotel room in search of some discrete clothing.  
He needed to consult the library about a few matters. It wouldn’t be good to ruin his PR campaign if people were to recognize him.  
But he couldn’t risk ruining his grand plan either.  
Asking about angry spirits would get him nowhere, but recorded accounts might prove his theory right.

 

* * *

 

    At nightfall, after her mother tucked her in for the night and left to go to her room, Coco began to count the seconds.  
She knew to wait before her friend showed up, she also knew to be fairly patient in general despite being of such a young age.  
Tonight however, she was far too antsy to do so.  
As soon as she could no longer hear her mamá’s footsteps, little Coco flung her covers off and went to get her coat.  
Tonight she’d wait for him at the balcony.  
    Seated out in the cold, as she waited for the giant skeleton, Coco couldn’t help let her gaze wander up into the stars.  
She remembered nights where her tired father would come sing to her their secret lullaby. In some of these nights, they would go out onto the balcony to sing beneath the stars.  
Then, when they were done, her papá would hold her and point out the constellations.  
Coco never asked if the ones he showed her were really constellations (“The Silly Xolo” wasn’t in any of the books that her uncles had on that particular matter, nor was there one called the “Giant Mariachi Hat”), but then again why should she have?  
She could still see what her father drew out in the sky for her and it felt all the more special that he’d not only written her a song just for her, but also that he’d make up star formations just to make her laugh.  
The memory alone made some of the anger Coco was holding onto, melt away. It gave way to sadness as she thought of her father and how his letters had stopped coming.  
Was he out there now? Maybe, looking into the stars like she was?  
Did he still sing her song, like she did?  
She knew he did, deep in her heart.  
    The small Rivera girl’s thoughts were interrupted as she felt the balcony tremble lightly in warning of her friend’s approach.  
The twin yellow lights came next, as Señor Esqueleto took notice of her almost immediately. He looked almost surprised to see her outside already in the cold.  
It was time to scold him.  
Standing up tall and putting her hands on her hips, doing her best impression of her mamá’s disapproving stance, Coco glared up into the blinding eye sockets.  
  _“You said you’d be more careful!”_ she started, noticing how her gargantuan friend’s surprised look crumbled into a guilty one. He knew what she was talking about, of course he did. “You scared someone badly! That’s not ok!”  
The giant skeleton rumbled softly in distress, before kneeling down to write in the dirt as he’d done for the past few nights whenever he needed to communicate with her.  
His writing was getting better too. It was looking less like chicken scratch and more legible.

  **“It was an accident!”** As if she hadn’t known that.

  _“That doesn’t make it any less bad!”_ Coco replied, peering down at the reply from the edge of the balcony. Reading it upside down was a bit of a challenge, but she was getting the hang of it.

  **“I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry”**

  _“It was even morning when you left...How did you get caught?”_ Coco frowned. He never stayed around so close to sunrise, so how had that happened? And why?

**“I don’t know.”**

    Now that was silly. How could he not know how he got caught? He’d probably made some noise, or didn’t leave fast enough, or...Or anything really! Señor García could have been out for a late night walk for all she knew. She didn’t get to talk to him much, she didn’t like the smell of blood he carried because of his job.

  **“I was going away but I stopped. I don’t know why.”**

Coco frowned as she watched him quickly erase the message to write another one.

**“I thought I hurt him by accident, but he was just screaming and screaming. I didn’t know what to do.”**

Her friend looked upset. She wondered just how badly he’d felt when he’d looked down and realized he’d frightened a person half to death.  
Probably not very good.  
It must have been a very scary experience...But speaking of of scary experiences...  
  _“I guess it wasn’t entirely your fault...But uh...You really have to be careful from now on! And uh, I have something I need to tell you.”_ Coco admitted, changing the subject so as to keep them both from dwelling on it for too long. Her friend looked upset enough that she didn’t need to tell him off for too long. “My best friends, Julio and Rosita, they’re going to stay over for two whole weeks...And uh, well, they don’t know about you.”  
If skeletons could blink, she was sure Señor Esqueleto would be doing so, as he stared at her with his head cocked slightly to the side in curiosity.  
He was probably wondering why she was making it sound like such a bad thing.  
  _“They’re going to be staying in my room...And uh, that means I gotta introduce them to you? And you to them? And uh…”_ She gulped “You’re going to be...Probably kind of, really scary to them?”  
She could see him mouthing something, very likely a simple “oh” of realization as he caught on to the issue.  
Of course. Giant spooky skeleton. That wasn’t the sort of thing kids were used to seeing, right?  
Even if for him it didn’t feel unusual.  
Still Señor Esqueleto knew to follow one rule. Hide. Hide when he visited his favorite little tiny.  
  _“That means you can’t show up so soon, you have to let me tell them and then I’ll bring them out to meet you, ok?”_ And hopefully they’d see he was nice and not go out screaming into the night.  
    Almost immediately a large smile seemed to overtake the giant skeleton’s “face” as he nodded eagerly. Coco could tell he was excited to meet her friends. Maybe eager to make more friends?  
It wouldn’t be too odd a thought, she knew he must be quite lonely with being the way he was and people being scared of him.  
 “Ok, then tomorrow you get to meet them. But you gotta promise you’ll be really careful ok? No more scaring people either. I don’t like those mean stories they make up about you…Promise you’ll always be good, ok?”  
Señor Esqueleto nodded once more, raising his hand and opening up the palm, miming a scout’s honor gesture, before he lowered his hand and carefully extended his pinky finger in her direction.  
She couldn’t help smile and do the same, her much smaller pinky dwarfed by the massive size of his phalanges, but it was the thought that counted.  
A promise was a promise.  
    With that done, the pair went on to do as they usually did. With Coco perched up on her Señor Esqueleto’s head as he walked calmly around Santa Cecilia, being mindful of where he walked, while humming that odd and strangely familiar tune of his.  
It was such a soothing melody that it comforted her through out the night, until she drifted off into a fitful slumber that held none of the worries she’d carried with her all day.  
When  the sun began to rise, Coco found herself waking up in bed, her friend nowhere in sight.  
The doorframe of the balcony was slightly misshapen, which answered how she’d gotten back in bed after falling asleep. Still, damaged or not, she couldn’t help but smile at the door.  
Señor Esqueleto had put her to bed and tucked her in. And to make it better, she’d dreamed of her papá that night.  
For a moment, she wondered if her papá would become friends with the colossal skeleton when he came back home. Coco really hoped so.

 

* * *

 

    The library proved useful in the end. Ernesto could barely believe how many books had been made just to report odd occurrences relating to superstition and the supernatural.  
It was almost ridiculous...But it helped him immensely.  
Several books spoke of demonic apparitions, shadow people that fed on negative thoughts and feelings, possession, angry spirits…  
But one book in particular had caught his attention the most.  
“Legends from Across the Globe - A book on mythical creatures belonging to other cultures”.  
    He’d be embarrassed to admit he’d enjoyed looking through the curious collection of cultural horror stories, but Ernesto would not deny he didn’t feel slightly “enlightened”.  
Apparently, there was a japanese folklore monster called the Gashadokuro, which so happened to be a giant skeleton.  
Reading about it had been...Err...Disturbing.  
And their description did not quite match what he knew of Hector’s death, so the fact he’d come back as something of that kind was...Well, not too good.  
It certainly said a lot about his ex-best friend.  
But then again, this was México, not Japan, so what did Ernesto really know?  
From what he could tell, spirits seemed to be very odd with picking how they looked or came back to haunt.  
The skeleton thing was probably just a huge coincidence...Or maybe, now that he thought about it, it had more to do with some old conversation he’d had with Hector early on in their tour.

_“Don’t look so glum, Hector. You’ll be back before you know it, and you’ll have a lot of money in your pocket to boot! You’ll be able to provide for your family!” Ernesto had said, giving his friend a rough pat on the back as they rode the train to their next destination._   
_“I know but...I just, I miss them…” Hector had sighed, looking sadly out the window of the train at the landscape. “I miss my girls Ernesto…”_   
_“You’ve been gone little more than two weeks amigo! What’s there to miss?”_   
_“A lot...Two weeks is a lot! It’s an eternity for a child.” Ernesto shook his head at the remark, unable to understand that at all. Two weeks was NOT a lot. It certainly hadn’t left the impact he’d wanted when they performed. “I just, I wish I could see them every day and still be able to provide for them.”_   
_At that, Ernesto couldn’t help laugh._   
_“You’d need very long legs to accomplish that.” Ernesto chuckled, which made Hector pout in reply._   
_“My legs are long enough as they are, any longer and I’d look ridiculous.” he mumbled as he crossed his arms._   
_“Then what would you rather? Longer legs or just being large enough that they did not look disproportionate?” Ernesto asked, laughing harder at the thought._   
_“What….Like a giant? Goodness no! I’d be too large to play my guitar!” Hector couldn’t help join in the laughter at the absurdity of the remark. “Although, I’d certainly be able to travel from town to town in one day. I’d see my girls and be back before sundown so we could perform.”_   
_“You’d scare people half to death as well!”_   
_“Oh I would not…”_   
_“Would too and you know it Hector.” Ernesto found himself wiping a tear from the corner of his eye as he settled down from his laughing fit. “But díos would it make you memorable...Millions would come to see the dashingly handsome musician, Ernesto de la Cruz, and his abnormally sized partner and fellow musician, Hector Rivera!”_   
_“Ajá, muy gracioso ... Eres un comediante de verdad.” Hector rolled his eyes, although the smile on his face betrayed what he really felt._   
_“Sí, mi madre también lo pensó.” Ernesto grinned “Although, for that act I think we should give you a better look. Maybe we could paint your face to look like a calavera.”_   
_“So I’d be what? A giant skeleton?”_   
_“You’d be memorable.”_   
_“And I’ll bet you’d be riding on my head singing your heart away while I played a guitar too small for my hands.”  
 “...Ok now that you say that, it seems less ideal. Ah well, back to the drawing board…”_

    Ernesto frowned as he recalled that particular conversation.  
It seemed like it had stuck with Hector after death, enough so that it influenced the appearance he took. A giant skeleton.  
It’d be flattering if it wasn’t so annoyingly ironic.  
The monster that was haunting him was one of his own creation, and Ernesto hated it.  
But it did make him slowly believe that perhaps taking care of Imelda and Coco would indeed be the solution. After all, that whole conversation had stemmed from Hector’s desire to see them, so maybe that was what he did when he wasn’t hunting him?  
It would make sense...But also be a problem.  
What if that damned spirit had found a way to reveal to them what Ernesto had done?  
They’d ruin his reputation!  
He couldn’t allow that, not now, not ever!  
    In three weeks, he’d be in Santa Cecilia. In three weeks, he’d make Hector’s two _precious_ girls perish in a terrible “accident”. In three weeks, he would be saved.  
What he did not know, is that three weeks were more than enough for a few things to be set in motion.  
Like how Coco would be introducing her two best friends to her tremendously sized secret friend.  
Like how Imelda’s dreams would once more betray her and make her wonder just what happened to her missing husband.  
Like how Julio and Rosita would insist in figuring out where Señor Esqueleto came from.  
Like how Hector’s own mind would begin to mend as soon as he caught sight of one particular poster…

**Ernesto de la Cruz,**

**The Grand Homecoming Concert,**

**Santa Cecilia’s greatest musician!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to pick up on Ernesto's side of the story.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I had to write something after seeing these two posts:
> 
> https://melcecilia14.tumblr.com/post/173080889546/not-gonna-lie-the-first-thing-i-pictured-when-i  
> https://melcecilia14.tumblr.com/post/173176118116/do-you-have-any-headcanons-of-giant-skeleton
> 
> How can I resist some size bending AUs that promise a lot of angst and a lot of fluff?  
> I'll definitly write more on this.


End file.
